The Penelopiad

“Now that I’m dead I know everything. This is what I wished would happen, but like so many of my wishes it failed to come true. I know only a few factoids that I didn’t know before. Death is much too high a price to pay for the satisfaction of curiosity, needless to say.”

The book opens with this assertion by Penelope, which immediately sets the conversational tone. It also sets our expectations—though our narrator has some supernatural knowledge, Atwood is preparing the reader for an account that is no more definitive than any other. A telling that raises as many questions as it answers, as even death offers no clarity.

“And what did I amount to, once the official version gained ground? An edifying legend. A stick used to beat other women with.”

Here, Penelope addresses how history has remembered her. And, instead of showcasing pride in becoming the paragon of faithfulness, she expresses despair that she has only come to be used to punish women for not embodying male-dominated ideals of female behavior.

“We ground the flour for lavish wedding feasts, then we ate the leftovers; we would never have a wedding feast of our own, no rich gifts would be exchanged for us; our bodies had little value.”

The twelve maids here define themselves and their painful position in palace life. While they were close to the nobles and the defining moments of their lives, they were treated as property, not due the celebrations and pleasures of the upper classes.